"We think your area of the state is going to be a very good market for us," said Mike Reeves, marketing director for Winston-Salem, N.C.-based Platinum Rotisserie, which plans to open a total of 36 stores, mostly in the Southeast, in 1995. The company opened 31 stores in North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia last year. "Your area is very progressive and it's growing."

The company will open its second store in Newport News in July, and will open one store each in Williamsburg, Virginia Beach and Denbigh and two others in Chesapeake later this year, Reeves said.

He would not say where Platinum would open other stores. "We can select and build a site within about 90 days," said Boston Market Inc. spokeswoman Anna Airey. "It's hard for us to speculate much further out than that. We're opening about one a day across the country."

The Boston Market stores will be the first for Hampton Roads. Another franchisee operates 19 stores in Virginia, mostly in the northern part of the state, and plans to open three more stores this year, Airey said.

Reeves said Platinum will have as many as 180 stores in seven states by the end of 1996.

Each store takes up about 3,000 to 3,200 square feet of space and employs about 50 full-and part-time workers, he said.

Reeves predicted that each of the Hampton Roads stores will serve 3,500 to 4,500 customers a week.

The company will break ground on the Hampton store in March. It will seat 60 customers inside and 24 customers outside, he said.

Boston Chicken, the nation's fastest-growing fast-food chain, changed its name last week to reflect its expanding menu.

"We don't just serve chicken," Reeves said. "We are going to serve turkey, ham and meatloaf as well. We are going to give the public what they want."

Reeves said he's not worried about competition from Kenny Rogers Roasters, which opened a 92-seat store in Kiln Creek's Victory Center last November. It was the first of a dozen that the Fort Lauderdale-based chain plans to build in the area in the next two years. Kenny Rogers also sells rotisserie chicken and home-style vegetables.

"We think that the competition makes us better," Reeves said. "Supermarkets are our real competition because we market ourselves in large part to families."

"We make what you don't have time to cook," he said. "You can pick it up at our place, but it tastes like you prepared it at home."

Meals at both Boston Market and Kenny Rogers average $4 to $6 each.

Golden, Colo.-based Boston Market, which grew from 13 stores in 1990 to 534 last year, is now in 30 states and the District of Columbia. The company, which plans to have 850 stores by the end of 1995, posted sales of $383.7 million last year, up from $42.7 million in 1992, Airey said.

The stock market embraced the company and the rotisserie chicken concept on Nov. 8, 1993, when Boston Market went from $10 per share to $24.25 in its initial public offering. The stock, which has since roosted in the $18 range, closed Friday at $18.625, down almost 44 cents.

The Nasdaq Stock Market, where Boston Market trades under the symbol BOST, was closed Monday for Presidents' Day.

MOVING TO HAMPTON ROADS

LOCAL DEVELOPMENT

Platinum Rotisserie Corp. plans to open seven Boston Market franchises in Hampton Roads this year. The first, at Mercury Boulevard and Coliseum Drive, should open in June.